Wednesday, August 20, 2008

you'll never guess but...

Where a river floes, where people are apt to gather to the source of traffic and commerce, of liquid life.

Great cities, gritty purposeful towns, villages becalmed in seas of green meadow, divided by arterial waterways, green, brown or sparkling brook that give and take in measure the ingredients and effluent, the fish and fowl, and crop and cooling balm to set the form of white hot steel in shapes we know and need in clouds of screaming, scalding steam.

All edges in the land, the mighty crinkle cut, where once great glaciers wove patterns in relief or soft stone slipped and slid, warped over under, layered, thrown up in laval anguish. The land lent gravitas by movement now set in stone.

We are drawn to edges.

We are drawn to boundaries. To cliffs, to river banks, the gates of mountain ranges, the beginnings and ends, the exclamations of mineral vocabulary.Perhaps we stop and stare and whilst we do so put down roots. Or we come here and go no further, define our life by a boundary we did not set but perceive as fate, a natural given, a literal perceptible border about that which we might consider known and therefore ours.

And build, and often prosper, comforted, in our place.

But boundaries have two sides, by definition they divide, a division which invites the naturally inquisitive and inventive to connect. And so we build.....we bridge.

"Bridge".

Too small a word.

Too small a word for herculean iron of Victoriana or gossamer suspended ribbons, spider trellis, gothic multitudinous arch or square ribbed stalwart cage that leaves what I know, where I am and disappears like a lover’s promise into hope filled otherness beyond.